Most of my users perfer a cleaner, less cluttered desktop. The most frequesnly used Application and Functions are added to the desktop or Pinned to the Taskbar, while the lesser used items are easily found through the Start menu.

The Metro interface seems to be planning for that eventuality. If you mouse over to the lower right corner of the Start screen (Metro UI) you can click a minus sign that will "zoom out" if you will, to show potentially hundres of tiles.